Kirk is named president, Rogers is vice-president

There were two new faces up on dais at Monday night's Hesperia Unified School District school board meeting, but there was also a strong dose of déjà vu, with multiple echoes of past board meetings.

First, after months of shorter board meetings, the school board meeting ran more than four hours, ending at 10:15 p.m. After the 2006 election, school board meetings routinely ran until after 10 p.m. and often after 11 p.m.

Secondly, the school board conducted the annual reorganization of officers and ended up with the same line-up of officers.

There's nothing in HUSD board bylaw 9100, the bylaw that covers board organization, that dictates the roles change on an annual basis, but traditionally, the board vice-president moves up to the presidency and the board secretary position changes hands. It works similarly at the Hesperia City Council, where Mayor Pro Tem Thurston "Smitty" Smith was just selected as mayor at their December 2 meeting and Councilwoman Rita Vogler is now on deck to be mayor in 2010.

But the 2009 school board president is the same as the 2008 president, Robert Kirk. School board vice-president Lee Rogers received a nomination for president from newly elected school board member Chris Bentley, but the motion died without a second from any of the other four board members. Kirk was chosen to remain in the presidential seat for a second year by a 4-1 vote, with only Bentley voting against it.

(Kirk's back-to-back terms are not without precedent: Former school board member Jack Hamilton was president in 1991 and 1992 and again in 2002 and 2003 and Eric Swanson was president in 2004 and 2005. But 18 of the 22 times a board president has been selected, the position has been rotated.)

Rogers and Hardy Black retained their vice-president and secretarial positions by 5-0 votes.

And finally, just as happened after the 2006 election of Kirk, Rogers and Black, the school district's calendar was put back up for discussion: Black ended the meeting by asking to put a discussion of the 2009-2010 calendar on an agenda for an upcoming meeting. (A similar proposal was nixed after months of debate in 2007.)

Monday's meeting was the first for newly elected board members Chris Bentley and Anthony Riley, both of whom were officially sworn in on Friday evening so that they could participate in closed session Monday night.

The next scheduled meeting of the Hesperia Unified School District school board will take place on January 12 at 6 p.m. at the HUSD annex building, 15576 Main Street.

Beau Yarbrough can be reached at 956-7108 or at beau@hesperiastar.com.